We have a raised yard, with a wall around it. Our idea was to start a garden along the edge of the wall, at the front of the yard. Little did we know how much work it would be! Upon inspecting the soil, we discovered that it didn't exactly seem nutrient-rich. So after discussion with staff at the wonderful Mother Earth Gardens in South Minneapolis and Linda (Master Gardener!), it was determined that we would need to amend the soil. Amending the soil, for those who don't know, involves digging up a good portion of the existing soil and then mixing it with some type of organic matter, such as compost. Compost is, in fact, what I chose to use. I picked up several bags of it at the Menards garden center for less than $2/bag and was ready to go!
Once I actually started digging the soil up, I realized how much work this was going to be. It turns out that our yard is full of rocks! Every two inches, it seemed that I was hitting a rock that I had to dig up. This drastically increased the work time unfortunately. It took about three hours to get the little 2x2 area on the one side of our yard completed. Then this past Thursday I spent about two hours just digging up the grass on the other side of the yard. Yesterday I spent another three hours digging up that soil and mixing it with the compost. I finished half of it, and we are now out of compost. So next weekend, hopefully, I'll be tackling the other half.
Somehow this has become my project, in the sense that I'm the one doing all of the manual labor. However, Mira is helping me with the fun part -- picking the flowers to put in. Yesterday morning we went to the St. Paul Farmers Market and bought plants for the completed half. We bought three beautiful Lily plants. They are Angelique Oriental Lilies, a dwarf variety that only grows to about 18" in height. I absolutely love lilies, so that was my must-have. Mira picked out Astras, also known as Balloon Flowers. We transplanted those into the garden today, and next week we're going to get some annuals to put in as well. I also headed back over to Menards and picked up some mulch to put down after we have all the flowers in. It's looking great! On the little side I decided to seed and see what happens. I put in Zinnias and Painted Daisies. The daisies are perennials, but they won't bloom until their second season, so we'll have to wait that out.
I wish that I had a picture of all the rocks that I dug out, as it is quite impressive. But Mira and I had to put them all in the backyard in a large barrel because the front was looking very disorderly and we're having people over tomorrow night. But the plus side to all the rocks is that I will be washing all the dirt off of them and using them as a nice border to the garden. Although even after that I'll have enough left over to build a wall or something!
Below is a picture of our work-in-progress. I'll do some photo updates over the next couple weeks so you can see our progress.
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